


Light Up the Night

by peopleareicebergs



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: AU Wayhaught, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25235461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peopleareicebergs/pseuds/peopleareicebergs
Summary: Nicole Haught is a lamplighter, fending off the darkness each night. The darkness inside her heart, on the other hand, proves harder to overcome. That is, until one fateful evening when something - someone - catches her eye.
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 10
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to @fanwolf1216 on Twitter for the prompt! (https://twitter.com/fanwolf1216/status/1282171311834279936?s=19)

_Flicker...flicker...whoosh._

Nicole walked on through the dusk, her feet carrying her forward as her thoughts drifted back.

Back to the bed she'd left behind. The bed she was no longer welcome in.

Where would she sleep tonight?

She paused, raised the pole. _Flicker...flicker...whoosh._

Forty more lamps to light. It'd be full dark by the time she finished her route. No more sun to guide her, no more light to illuminate the twisting path ahead. 

Except, of course, for the light she brought into being.

Another pause. _Flicker…flicker...whoosh._

But wasn't that how it had always been? No one else brought her light. She'd been navigating the unknowable darkness of this world for years with nothing but a lantern in her heart.

And that lantern kept dimming. 

She'd thought Shae was different. Shae, whose fingertips on Nicole's neck made her blood race, whose lips tasted sweeter than nectar, whose soft murmurs promised safe harbor to her unmoored soul. 

Nicole looked up at the dark streetlamp. She raised the pole more slowly this time, marveling at how easy it was. A spark, a flicker or two, and then _whoosh_ as the gas ignited.

There'd been a spark with Shae, make no mistake. And Nicole's yearning heart had flickered hopefully more than once. But the fire never caught.

She wasn't sure how much more cold kindling she could take before her fuel ran out for good.

A whistle, a roar. The wind had kicked up while she'd been lost in darkness. A sudden gust knocked her sideways. The pole twisted in her grip, scattering sparks as it scraped the cobblestones.

Nicole corralled the pole, watching the sparks die out with a sigh. She looked up toward the next lamp…

...but found it already lit. 

No, that couldn't be right.

It was a window, behind the lamp. Light streaming from a window, that was it.

She blinked.

There was a shape in the window, silhouetted by the light.

She blinked again. The light couldn't possibly be so bright, not with this shape - a person, she could now see it was a person - blocking so much of it.

A step, two steps, three. Nicole's thoughts rushed forward into the present, eyes locked on the person - the woman - in the window. The woman whose hair fell loosely over her shoulders, swishing back and forth in the wind. The woman who was somehow (was this possible?) herself a source of light, brightening the twilit haze.

The woman who was looking back at her. Nicole could see it. She was close enough, standing just beyond the lamp, her task forgotten.

It couldn't have lasted more than a second. The woman in the window had glanced out at the windy evening, met Nicole's gaze, and returned to whatever she had been doing.

But a second was long enough.

Nicole felt it. That trick of the light was gone - the window was a fraction as bright as a lit streetlamp; she had no idea what she'd been thinking - but she felt it just the same.

The sight of the woman's eyes on her burned itself into Nicole's memory.

Her heart flickered. 

Flickered.

 _Whoosh_.


	2. Chapter 2

The hiss of the shower woke her up, just as it had every morning since Shae broke up with her. The pipes in this damned boarding house needed replacing, but the landlord wouldn't listen to a word Nicole said on the subject.

One day he'd have a flooded main floor on his hands. And the only thing stopping Nicole from looking forward to "I told you so" was her determination to be long gone from this place by then.

God, how much sleep did she get? An hour, maybe two? Last night was full of all the usual yelling and laughing and arguing from the other boarders - but that wasn't what had kept her up. 

She dressed quickly. It was early - too early to start her morning route, if she was honest - but she couldn't wait any longer. 

One by one by one, the lights went out. She strode along the cobblestones, trying not to break into a run. Twenty more lamps. Fifteen. Ten. She put one out that badly needed cleaning, but… no, it could wait one more day.

At last. There it was: the lamp, the mansion, the window.

The _empty_ window. 

Nicole's heart sank. But what had she expected? For the woman to be waiting for her? For a sign that the rush of the night before might go two ways? For a breathtakingly beautiful woman who lived in a _mansion_ to choose a mere lamplighter on nothing more than a glance?

What a fool she was. Still too soft, despite the world's best attempts to toughen her up. 

She lifted her pole, extinguished the flame. Set her sights on the next lamp…

And her feet refused to budge.

Nicole's eyes returned to the empty window, shrouded by curtains. She sighed. Her body never knew when to give up on a lost cause.

She supposed a few more minutes wouldn't hurt. The sun hadn't even hit the horizon yet.

Birds whistled in a nearby tree. Two squirrels raced across a patch of grass, chased by a barking dog. A man in a suit carrying a briefcase walked by, paying her as little notice as one would a grimy shop window.

A breeze ruffled the curtain. Or was it --

No. Not a breeze.

A hand.

 _Her_ hand.

It pulled the curtain aside... and there she was, no less gorgeous than half a day ago. Even in the low light of dawn, her skin positively shone.

Nicole found herself breathless, gasping for oxygen. The woman high above her breathed more easily, sucking in the morning air with a contented smile as she gazed out over the rooftops. 

Then a shadow appeared behind her. A voice, harsh and short. 

The smile - and then the woman - disappeared.

Nicole wasn't sure how long she remained frozen in place. A hundred dark, hopeless thoughts streaked through her mind. Chief among them: _She's married._

But that expression - clearly she wasn't happy with whoever had come into her room. Maybe it was her husband, maybe it wasn't… but she'd stopped smiling. 

Nicole would do _anything_ to make that smile come back.

She set her jaw, unstuck her legs. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she crept closer to the woman's house, scanning. 

There. Above the door. Something was painted. But… what was it? It didn't look like a word.

Closer still. The sky was beginning to lighten, enough to reveal the reason the design was barely legible: It was covered in mold, the letters carved into long-decayed wood.

In the back of her mind, Nicole wondered why anyone who lived in so large a house wouldn't take better care of their family name.

But more important to her - the most important thing in the entire world, in fact - was the name itself.

Nicole looked, squinted, and…

 _Earp_.


	3. Chapter 3

Day and night soon became interchangeable. Just two different ways of waiting for her next journey to the Earp house.

Between dawn and dusk, Nicole found herself lost in fantasy, imagining the woman's life.

One morning she was writing, perched at what must be a desk facing the window. But what was on the page? A letter to her mother? A sheet of music? The fourth chapter of her novel?

Perhaps Nicole could write her something - a note, a poem - and deliver it to her somehow… 

...No, that was a terrible idea. For one thing, Nicole had never written a poem in her life. For another, _she was nobody_. Mustn't forget her place.

That night, the woman in the window was reading, squinting in the dying light of sunset. She was often reading, Nicole noticed - books, scrolls (where did she find scrolls in this day and age?), pages that looked torn at the edges.

Was this research of some kind? She might be a scholar, mastering whatever subject so regularly held her fascinated gaze. Or perhaps an apprentice, diligently studying a trade?

But then why didn't Nicole ever see her leave the house? She'd begun to conduct her daily errands nearer to the Earp house - but by luck or design, she'd never seen the woman any more closely than the distance from her window to the cobblestones below.

Which was still close enough to make out the curl of her lips as she cracked open a book, the light in her eyes as her graceful fingers danced with a pen across a page, the set of her jaw as she took in the wide open world outside her window.

Sometimes she was there, in her bedroom, during the day - but not often, and when she was, it was never for long. Nicole heard the harsh voice calling her a few more times, but couldn't make out what it was saying.

Evenings were the best times. In the gathering dark, Nicole stood out less as she gazed up at the woman in the window. If passersby looked at her askance, she could move onto the next lamp and then double back when they'd gone. At first she stayed to the shadows, afraid to be caught staring by the woman she watched - but as the nights and days went by, she worried less and less.

For whatever reason, the woman never seemed to look down. Nicole began to wonder if that first night - that split-second glance they'd shared - had really happened.

About a week after she first noticed her, Nicole suddenly realized that the woman never turned on any lamps inside her room. She read, wrote, worked until the sunlight was well and truly gone. Then she would sigh, put her things away, and with a long look into the distance, disappear from Nicole's sight - until she reappeared at the first wisps of daylight early the next morning.

Nicole wasn't sure why it had taken her so long to notice this. Maybe the way the woman's skin glowed had distracted her. 

How achingly Nicole wished she could light up this woman's life - provide her the illumination the streetlamps (positioned below the window, too low to overcome the night bearing down on the woman's room) could not. Let her continue her pursuits - whatever they were - long into the night, as she so clearly yearned to do.

Nicole knew a thing or two about yearning. And that was _before_ this woman took up permanent residence in her brain.

The first few nights, Nicole had bucked tradition and joined the other boarders for dinner in the dining room. But she returned to eating in her room after none of them yielded any useful knowledge about the Earp family. ("Best leave that one alone, dear," the landlord's wife told her. "More trouble than they're worth." She refused to say anything more no matter how hard Nicole pressed.)

Like daytime, the quiet hours of night also found Nicole lost in fantasy… although fantasy of a different sort.

Brushing aside the woman's wavy brown hair as Nicole kissed her. 

Her fingers studying Nicole's body the way they studied the written word - thoroughly, and with care.

And her smile - that bright, magical thing - flashing, expanding, opening into a gasp as Nicole touched her. Biting her lower lip, arching her back, all lithe and writhe and oh, oh, oh…

 _Oh_ , how Nicole _wanted_ her.

But after the release came the regret. It was hopeless - _she_ , Nicole, was hopeless. For god's sake, here she was ruining her flimsy bedsheets over a woman whose _name_ she didn't even know.

Every night, as she fell asleep, she vowed to stop. To go to her boss and request a different route.

Every morning, she stopped by the Earp house and waited, telling herself it was the last time.

And every time she saw that clever, gorgeous face alive with possibility once more, her heart melted all over again.


	4. Chapter 4

And so it went, for what felt like ages. This lamplighter job was never supposed to last so long. She’d long ago saved up enough to buy passage on the first ship out of here.

Instead, Nicole spent weeks walking her route, heart full of the most misplaced hope she’d ever allowed herself to feel.

Until one Tuesday morning.

The weather had begun to cool that week. A day prior, Nicole had watched the woman in the window pull two blankets over her shoulders - first the one, and then after a moment’s hesitation, the second. A blanket and a bonus blanket.

She didn’t close the window panes, though.

That Tuesday morning, Nicole studied the woman’s eyes as they darted across a thick volume Nicole hadn’t seen her reading before. She seemed especially alight today - whatever the book was, it must be a good one.

Soon enough, Nicole heard that all too familiar - and all too horrible - voice, calling the woman away from her joy. Too muffled to hear clearly, but loud enough to make the barking tone obvious.

The woman shut her eyes, as she usually did when she heard it.

But then she did something different: She stayed.

She remained at her desk, frozen in place, eyes shut tight. Willing away the voice, the world.

The voice sounded again, louder, more insistent. Still the woman did not move. Nicole wished she could reach out and touch her, take her hand, pull her away from this house she never left and into… into arms that kept her warmer than even four blankets could.

The woman opened her eyes. Her gaze darted to and fro - rooftops, sky, trees, ground - and then…

And then she saw Nicole.

Her brow furrowed. Nicole gasped and quickly looked away, trying to appear busy. What was she supposed to be doing? Right, the lamp. It was -- it was already off, okay, so she’d done that already. Did it need cleaning? Maybe. She should climb up and take a look.

 _SLAM_. Her head snapped back toward the window, where the woman was no longer looking at Nicole but now wore a panicked expression.

“WAVERLY!” a voice shouted. The woman - Waverly? - leapt up, shut her book, and ran out of sight.

 _Waverly_.

It was perfect. It was beautiful. It was _her_.

 _Finally_ , she had a name.

Several moments of elation passed before Nicole remembered what had just happened in the bedroom high above her. Her smile - she’d been grinning like a madwoman, she now realized - disappeared.

In its place was a set jaw and gritted teeth. Nicole was going to find out everything she could about Waverly Earp. And then she was going to get her the hell out of that house.

And whoever that man was - father, brother, husband, it didn’t matter - there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop her.


	5. Chapter 5

Well, good news and bad news.

The good: She'd found no Waverly Earp in the town marriage records. 

The bad: She hadn't found a Waverly Earp in _any_ records.

Who _was_ this woman?

Nicole had thought her interest in the woman - in Waverly, if that was really her name - couldn't possibly grow any more intense. She was wrong. The mystery drove her crush to clear obsession territory. 

She took to whispering Waverly's name, just before sparking the lamp outside the Earp mansion. It was insane, she knew. She was borderline stalking this woman.

But Waverly never left the house, as far as she knew. Nicole could flirt with the best of them (just ask Shae), but the three stories separating them nixed some of her favorite moves.

(Besides, Romeo tried the whole balcony thing with Juliet, and look what happened to them.)

There was something else, though. Sometimes, while Nicole was lighting or extinguishing the lamp, she could have sworn she was being watched. On a few occasions she spun around wildly, certain someone was approaching in the dim light.

But no one was there. Just her and Waverly, who showed no signs of noticing anything other than the words in front of her.

"Waverly," Nicole sighed early one morning, louder than she meant to. Not that it mattered; the curtains remained closed. Waverly didn't show.

This had gone on too long.

Nicole finished her route, returned to the boarding house, and started to pack. This town held nothing for her but heartache.

A replacement lamplighter couldn't start until morning, unfortunately, which meant one more route for Nicole. One more journey to light up the night.

And to put out the stubborn, starved lantern in her heart.

Her steps slowed as she approached the Earp house. She kept her eyes on the ground, refusing to look up as she'd done so many times before.

She stopped at the lamp, lifted the pole. _Flicker...flicker...whoosh._

A movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned, already reaching for the knife in her boot, and --

"Hi," said a voice. "Whoa, there."

Waverly raised her eyebrows.

Her eyebrows.

 _Her_ eyebrows. Up close.

What…

Nicole followed Waverly's gaze to the knife brandished in her hand. How had that gotten there?

Wait, stop, hold on. _Waverly._ Waverly outside. Waverly at ground level, right in front of her. She was…

She was so…

_Say something, you idiot._

Nicole swallowed and returned the knife to its hiding place. "Hi," she managed, her throat suddenly parched. "S-sorry."

"No problem," Waverly said. "You're smart to keep that on you. I can't imagine doing work that can only be done in the dark."

Nicole swallowed again. "I… I turn on the lights."

"Yes…" Waverly said slowly, "I know."

Was spontaneous combustion possible? Nicole found the prospect enticing.

She shook her head, trying to clear the clutter of emotion rendering her incoherent. Forcing a smile across her reddening cheeks, she tried to conjure up Flirty Nicole.

"I mean, my job is to turn darkness into light. It's like the glass that's half-empty or half-full - I can only work in the dark, but by doing that job, I end up working only in light."

Waverly's lips curled into half a smile, which Nicole decided to count as a glass half full.

"A lamplighter _and_ a poet," Waverly said. "But you exaggerate, of course. The light from this lamp barely even reaches my window. It's nothing but a pinprick against the night."

Nicole's gaze flicked to Waverly's window at her mention of it, then darted back to meet her soft green eyes. Those eyes held a challenge… and a possibility. Nicole's pulse raced.

"In my experience," she said, "all it takes to really turn things on is a little fire in a dark space."

Waverly stared at her. Something changed in her expression - a question answered. But what was the question?

"You know which window is mine," Waverly said evenly.

_Shit._

"You _have_ been watching me."

_Fuck._

"Why?"

Waverly's tone wasn't angry. It wasn't anxious. It was guarded, sure, but calm.

She wanted the truth. And that scared Nicole more than anything else could have.

Should she lie? Make some excuse? Convince Waverly she was imagining things? Those tools had worked well enough with Shae. 

Until they hadn't. 

"I… I guess I just… find you… fascinating."

Waverly blinked. "Fascinating how?"

"How? How _wouldn't_ I be fascinated by you? You're the most passionate reader and writer I've ever seen. You look out at the world like you're dreaming up whole new realities. You wring every last second out of this precious time available to you at dawn and dusk. I don't know what it is you're studying or working on, but I've never seen anyone so dedicated and determined to do something. You keep at it day after day and night after night. And somehow you're always glowing, always lit up with so much energy while you're working."

She took a breath. "It's rare to find someone so bright. And I mean that in every possible way."

Waverly was smiling at her. A real smile, a full smile. It almost knocked Nicole over and somehow steadied her at the same time.

"Tell me your name," Waverly said.

"Nicole. Nicole Haught."

"Haught, eh?" Waverly raised an eyebrow, still with that gorgeous smile Nicole could look at for the rest of time. "Well, aren't you going to ask me for my name too?"

"Oh, right, I --"

"-- already knew it?" Waverly finished. Nicole's cheeks burned all over again. Why was Waverly even talking to her? She'd been such a creep. "Tell me, Nicole Haught: How many lamps do you have left to light tonight?"

"Um, twenty-two."

"Perfect. Can I come with you?"

A moment passed. Nicole realized her mouth was open. What was happening? She'd been about to leave for good. She'd stopped here intending to say a silent goodbye to the mysterious and beautiful and fascinating Waverly Earp.

The fire burned bright in the lamp above them. Waverly's eyes sparkled.

"Absolutely," Nicole said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay, dear readers, and for the brevity of this chapter! It can be hard to find the energy for things these days. I'm working on it, I promise.

Was she breathing? She forced herself to take a breath. Passing out would be a pretty bad look for a first date.

_Not a date_. Just a walk.

A… very quiet walk.

Nicole had by now thought of at least a hundred things to say, and not one of them was good enough.

Eighteen lamps to go.

"So," Waverly said. She'd watched Nicole light all four lamps so far with unwavering interest.

"Sorry this is so boring," Nicole said quickly.

"What? No! Not at all! I mean… sorry, I know it's totally new for me, but for you it probably does get rather tedious."

Nicole shook her head. "Not since --" _Since I first laid eyes on you_. Probably best to dial back the stalking talk. "-- uh, since I got my own route."

"Does that mean you had to share a route before that? I thought lamplighters all worked alone."

"They do," Nicole said with a humorless laugh, "unless they're unmarried women with 'unsavory tendencies.' At least, that's how my prick of a boss put it."

She kept her eyes on the ground. A lot was riding on this moment. What would Waverly think of her? What questions would she ask? What assumptions would she make?

But she didn't ask any questions. She didn't say a thing. Instead, Waverly stopped walking entirely.

Nicole looked up, surprised to see Waverly's shoulders shaking.

"W--Waverly?" She wanted to close the small distance between them. She wanted to wrap Waverly in her arms. She wanted to figure out who was making Waverly tremble like this and tear them seven new holes.

Waverly took a deep breath. Her eyes were dry, but that looked to have taken some serious effort. "I'm sorry your boss is so awful," she said, looking not at Nicole but off into the distance. "I know a little bit about being 'unsavory.'"

Nicole's breath caught. Did she mean…

Waverly's eyes snapped suddenly toward hers. With a smile that wiped every trace of pain from her face, she said, "Let's keep going, shall we? It's not getting any lighter!"

She meant the night sky, of course. But the opposite was happening in Nicole's heart. A glimmer of hope bounced from chamber to chamber, illuminating corners that hadn't seen daylight in ages. It was a fragile flame, a tremulous light - but it was there, and it refused to be ignored.


End file.
